- Adobe Launches AI and Digital Trends Report
- Survey of 3,000 executives and 4,000 consumers reveals their attitudes toward agentic AI
- Consumers want a human touch, but are businesses really ready?
Adobe released its 2026 AI and Digital Trends Reportsurveying 3,000 executives and 4,000 consumers to uncover business and consumer attitudes toward agentic AI, business readiness, and overall experience and expectations.
The report contains some interesting findings: On the one hand, less than half of consumers (43%) said they would interact with a brand’s AI agent if given the opportunity. Still, 46% say they would have no problem if a brand used AI – with one important caveat that companies should seriously consider: they don’t care about using agentic AI – as long as their needs are met.
I would expect these numbers to increase – to a point. Because right now, a clear trend is emerging.
Report Results
Elsewhere, according to Adobe’s report, 37% said they would reduce their engagements with a brand if they expected human contact and got AI, and 70% think those interactions with AI should feel human. People don’t want robots, they crave human contact.
But what really struck me was the massive disconnect between how consumers and businesses measure AI success.
As you would expect from businesses, the main measures of success are cost measures and efficiency gains.
That’s just not what consumers care about. According to Adobe, users judge AI experiences based on “trust, transparency, and meeting their needs.”
To me, this gives the impression that some brands risk putting the cart before the horse. Without meeting users where they are and meeting their expectations, all the efficiencies and savings in the world won’t prevent consumers from finding a company that can meet their demands.
However, to achieve this, companies will have to overcome the many difficulties encountered in properly evolving their AI.
The report highlights how enterprise AI deployment readiness faces extreme pressures, with the biggest barriers to scaling being data integration and quality (75%). Less than half of the executives surveyed (43%) believe that the quality and accessibility of their data are adequate enough for the use of AI. And without it, all AI is doomed to failure.
This may well explain why so few of these companies have launched agentic AI organization-wide for customer support purposes (just 16%) and discovery and research purposes (a tiny 13%).
But it’s not all bad news for brands.
Aside from agentic AI, the vast majority of respondents (76%) say generative AI (think Firefly or Google’s Nano Banana) has improved the volume and speed of content ideation and production. Meanwhile, 70% said it helped non-creative teams produce content.
Commenting on the findings, Rachel Thornton, CMO of Adobe Enterprise, said: “Many organizations are still caught in this sweet spot between expectations and execution. As customer expectations evolve, brands must evolve to orchestrate agentic, AI-driven experiences that can act and respond at every touchpoint. […] to deliver meaningful experiences on a global scale.
